The Ponytail Incident
by jazzywinter
Summary: As mentioned in The New Jonesy, Jen hasn't hidden from boys since Junior Cordoza threatened to cut off her ponytail back in kindergarten. This is the story of how Nikki and Jen met all those years ago.


**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or locations mentioned!**

It started as a recess like all others, especially from the eyes of six year old Jen Masterson. There was only one small difference, so small that none of her classmates would notice, although Jen secretly hoped they would; her new purple running shoes. Her mom had taken her and Courtney to the Galleria Mall to get a dress fitted for Courtney's upcoming beauty pageant, but when Jen saw the sneakers in the display window of the Penalty Box, she wouldn't stop begging until her mom agreed to get them for her.

Now, she felt invincible as she took her first steps onto the playground with her new shoes and stood proudly with her hands on her hips as she waited for the compliments to come. But no such praise came. In fact, now that Jen thought about it, the playground was strangely deserted. _Where was everyone?_ Jen thought, but as she scanned the schoolyard, she found her answer. Furrowing her brow, Jen wondered to herself why the majority of her school had formed a crowd in the distance around an unknown source.

Drawn to the center by curiosity and the oohs and ahs of the kids around her, she squeezed her way to the center of the mob, where Junior Cordoza was surrounded by schoolmates as he showed off his shiny new red sneakers with lightning bolts on the side. "With these sneakers, I can run faster than anyone!" he exclaimed, and Jen heard a few 'wow!'s from the crowd. "I can run faster than lightning!" Junior continued, "So who's going to challenge me to a race?"

Jen looked around as the crowd went silent. Everyone knew that Junior Cordoza was the fasted kid in school. He had proved it on multiple occasions, beating everyone that had come up against him despite the fact that he was only in kindergarten, and had earned quite a reputation. Now that he had new sneakers, there was no chance of anyone challenging him, which only inflated his already huge ego. Jen scowled, just because Junior had decided to wear his new sneakers on the same day as her shouldn't have meant that he should get all the compliments. But Jen wasn't one to demand that people give her attention, so what was she to do?

"I will!" said a confident voice from the crowd. The rest of the student body looked to in Jen's direction and she realized that the confident voice had come from her. _Did I just say that?_ She thought, hoping that maybe the rest of the kids wouldn't think she was the one who had spoken. Junior, after a brief look of shock, composed himself and took a menacing step towards his challenger. "Are you sure about that?" he asked, obviously he hadn't actually been expecting someone to challenge him, especially not Jen, who at four inches shorter than him, looked slightly less dangerous than a house fly. "Fine. First one to make it to the slide wins." He went on when Jen did nothing but stare at him with her wide blue eyes.

Immediately things started happening all around her. People started moving, some kids left to go to the big yellow slide to judge who could touch it first, and Jen pulled her eyes away from Junior to look at the play structure that would act as the finish line all the way across the playground. She gulped as one kid laid a skipping rope on the grass in front of Junior and her for the start line. Jen looked to the side at her competitor who had his eyes dead set on the slide and was already taking a ready stance. Jen took hers as well and looked at a lanky black haired boy in front of her who started counting down from three.

_Three..._

Jen tightened her ponytail and took shaky breaths. She wasn't ready to race. What if she fell? What if she pulled a muscle? After all, she hadn't even stretched first and that was one of the most important things to do to prevent injury.

_Two..._

Why had she so stupid and volunteered herself to race? If she lost, she would be a laughing stock! She could already picture her future gym classes; everyone would pick her last to be on their team for the rest of her life!

_One..._

She looked down, about ready to fake a stomach ache and back out, when she saw her feet, noticing the bright, new, purple running shoes with the shiny white stripes on the sides. She remembered how happy she had been when her mom agreed to buy them, how she had felt invincible stepping out on the playground with them on. That was all she needed for encouragement. She took a deep breath, set her eyes on the yellow slide and-

_GO!_

She took off, pumping her arms and legs and catching speed. Her eyes never wavered from the slide and she could feel her retinas begin to hurt because of the light reflecting off of it from the sun but she didn't care, she was running like the wind. A smile crossing her face as she approached the yellow plastic and outstretched her hands, she was almost there, nothing in the world mattered but her and that slide. Then finally, impact.

The thump of her hands stopping her when she reached the slide was music to her ears. Then another thump half a second later, which must have been Junior, and Jen knew she had won. She looked to the boy, confusion in his eyes, and she knew what he was thinking. He was wondering how he could have lost, even while wearing brand new shoes with lightning bolts on them. It probably didn't make any sense to him. Jen took a step towards him and held out her hand to shake. "Good race." She said with a smile over the cheers of her school mates. No matter what, Jen always made it a point to be a good sport.

Her victory was short lived though; Junior took one look at Jen's hand and his confusion immediately turned to anger. He ignored her peace offering and pointed a finger at her warningly "I hate losing. You better run and hide because if I find you I'm gonna cut off that ponytail!" he threatened, and Jen, too petrified to reason with him brought a hand to her to her hair and ran away before he could somehow pull a pair of scissors out of thin air and make good to his threat.

Six year old Nikki Wong sat on one of the plastic children's chairs in the empty kindergarten class, her feet resting comfortably up on the table as she read a Robert Munsch book. They were untouched, as most of the kids preferred playing with cars, dolls or dinosaur figurines rather than reading. Nikki glanced at the window at all the kids currently enjoying recess and smiled to herself because she didn't have to be outside with them pretending to have fun while playing mindless games of jump rope and hopscotch.

A curious sound brought her attention back to the room she was sitting in. It sounded something like a squeak but a little more like a moan. She put her book down and straightened up from her slouchy position to listen more carefully. When it came again, Nikki realized it was coming from underneath the table. She poked her head under and jumped back when she found the body of a girl lying there, crumpled in the fetal position, her head almost completely hidden, covered in the hood of her sweater. _How long had she been under there?_ Nikki wondered. Regardless, Nikki refused to share her room with another snot nosed kid. Recess was her quiet time. The little time she got during the day, other than nap time, when she could be completely alone and enjoy the peace of her own company. This girl, whoever she was, was ruining that time with her little squeaking. Nikki wouldn't stand for it.

"Hey kid." She called and poked her so she would take off her hood and look her in the eye. "Hey you, purple shoes, you can't be in here." She continued when the girl didn't move.

"I can't go back out there." Jen managed to spit out and held the hood tighter around her hair.

"I don't care where you go. You just can't be in here. This room is occupied." Nikki replied, but was only met with a head shake in refusal from the girl on the floor.

"Can't I just stay in here with you? There's plenty of space, you won't even know I'm here." Jen pleaded.

"What? No!" Nikki's stubborn side made itself known, she refused to compromise.

"Hey, why do you get to stay in here anyway? Everyone else is outside." Jen remarked, momentarily distracted from her fear of Junior coming after her. She lifted her hoodie to just above her eyes so she could see who she was talking to.

Nikki rolled her eyes, wishing this girl would just hurry up and get out of her room so she could get back to her book. "I didn't want to go outside." Nikki replied. Technically it was the truth. Every day before recess Nikki pulled a stunt that would get her in trouble and the teacher would tell her that she would have to stay inside during recess again. Nikki pretended to be heartbroken about the idea of missing play time, but in reality, this was the way she wanted things. "It doesn't matter why I'm in here. The point is, I'm allowed and you're not so you need to get out."

"No, you don't understand. I can't go back out there. Junior said he was going to cut off my ponytail if he ever saw me again!" Jen explained, her fear returning and she pulled her hood back over her entire face. A muffled moan of despair just barely audible from behind the fabric.

Nikki took a deep breath, trying to summon her patience. Obviously there was going to be no way of convincing this girl to leave her room unless her little problem went away, and it wasn't like she was very likely to solve said problem herself. It looked as though Nikki was going to have to get involved. "Come on, kid." She said grabbed her wrist and practically dragging her out from under the table.

"My name's Jen. Hey, where are we going?" Jen said as she was pulled to her feet.

"Nikki. And we're going to pay Junior a little visit."

Jen watched feebly from behind the slide, her hoodie still pulled close to her face so that hopefully people wouldn't recognize her, as Nikki stood up on the slide. "Hey everyone!" she called, and the kids in the near vicinity looked in her direction. "Where is Junior! I need to have a word with him!"

Most of the kids looked around them, unsure of where Junior had disappeared to. After the race, all of the kids in the playground had gone back to their respective playing. Junior Cordoza was now old news, after all, Jen had beaten him. He wasn't the fasted kid in school anymore, she was. Part of Jen hoped that he wouldn't actually show up. That Junior had run away because of the shame of losing. Unfortunately, within a few seconds, he made his appearance.

"What do you want?" he said stepping up to the slide, his face scrunched up in a scowl.

"What do I want?" Nikki asked rhetorically, jumping off the slide and getting as close as she could to Junior's face. She had to stand on her tip toes, and even then she only made it to his chin, but no matter how short she was, Jen still thought she looked awfully dangerous from where she was crouching. "I want you to apologize to Jen!"

Junior laughed at the tiny girl in front of him, "Or what?" his tone turned eerie as a crowd began to form around the two kindergarteners. For a moment Jen thought that a fight was about to break out.

"You go apologize to my friend right now and promise never to cut off her ponytail, or I swear I'll chop off every one of your fingers so you won't even be able to hold the scissors that you need to cut it with!" Nikki threatened. Her voice had started off eerily quiet and built until she was yelling right up in his face. And just so Junior knew that she wasn't messing around, she took his wrist and twisted it around so that he fell to his knees with discomfort.

"Ow! Ow! Let go! Let GO!" He pleaded, and she released him.

"Now get to the apologizing!" she demanded and pointed to where Jen was standing. Junior crawled over to Jen, mumbled an apology and kept crawling away. Jen thought his voice sounded close to tears. She raised her eyebrows, impressed at how much authority was stored in Nikki's small body. Nikki smirked triumphantly back as Jen, and then, realizing that the school was still crowded around her, turned to them and yelled, "Well? What are you all still looking at?!" and immediately the crowd dispersed.

When almost everyone was gone, Nikki approached Jen, her confident composure replaced by the annoyed one that Jen had seen back in the classroom. "There, okay? Now you can live without fear of a loser cutting off your ponytail. Can I go back to my book now?"

Jen was just about to say thank you and yes, she could go back inside, when something occurred to her. "Hey, wait," she called as Nikki was turning away. "When you were talking to Junior... you said I was your..friend?" Jen noted.

Nikki's eyes went wide. _Had she really said that?_ She wondered, trying to remember. She quickly composed herself again, not wanting Jen to think that it was a big deal. "Yeah, well, it would kind of look weird if I was randomly defending you." She quickly came up with an explanation.

"Oh, so you didn't mean it?" Jen asked, a little let down. Kindergarten hadn't started that long ago, Jen still didn't have many friends. She would have been glad to call Nikki one, considering how valiantly she had stood up for her.

"Well..." Nikki thought about it for a second, she noted the tone of Jen's voice. And if she was being honest with herself, staying inside for recess wasn't helping her make many friends either. She could do with a few. "No, I meant it. You're my friend." She gave a small, half-smile. Before she knew it, Jen had wrapped her arms around her in a hug. The impact knocked the wind out of her a little.

"Thanks, Nikki." Jen whispered as she pulled away. And from that moment on, the two were joined at the hip.


End file.
